


the disappearance of the girl

by siddals



Category: Marco Polo (TV)
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Character Study, Emotional/Psychological Abuse, F/M, Gen, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Suicidal Ideation, canonical sexual assault
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-16
Updated: 2015-06-16
Packaged: 2018-04-04 18:09:06
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,783
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4147728
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/siddals/pseuds/siddals
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She will never be royal in that sense. She knows there are few things she would not do to remain alive.</p><p>(It is her gift and her curse. She knows herself and what she is capable of in a way that few others can.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	the disappearance of the girl

**Author's Note:**

> WARNING for portrayal of an abusive relationship, (canonical) sexual assault, suicide and suicidal ideation. I tried not to add anything beyond what's shown in canon, but since it's Kokachin backstory fic, it does deal with all of the above in some forms, as her narrative does. Title from the song of the same name by Phildel.

_the dead are safe in their nothingness._

_it is we, captive in our own broken hearts,_

_who must breathe and run, breathe and run._

_troy!_

_we will track your ashes through the world._

_and when they ask us where we came from,_

_we will say “nowhere.”_

**the trojan women** by euripedes, trans. ellen mclaughlin

 

-

 

The headdress feels strange, heavy, on her head. The Khan’s soldiers march her to his ger as the final proof of victory, the last of the Bayaut brought to submission. She has no time to grow accustomed to the part, to allow herself to adjust, to rehearse.

They may have spared her for her blood, but she must show deference all the same. She knows that rules are made and unmade by this Khan, that she is only so valuable as she makes herself. They surely have enough princesses to spare.

She says her piece and renounces her people and the Khan barely seems to see her. Even as a princess she is hardly of consequence here, important enough only to live. This war has been fought for conquest, for the gold of the Bayaut, for glory, not for her. The Khan hardly seems the monster she’s heard tales of, only a man, heavy and red-faced and tired. He seems only too ready to have her dismissed.

The Empress stands beside him, straight backed and sharp-eyed, untouched by the dirt and stain of war. The soldiers watch her, half-leering, half-deferent, unsure what to do with a woman both princess and prisoner.

Not even slaves are taken. That is the price paid for Bayaut insolence, for defiance of the Khan of Khans. An example is to be made.

The Empress steps forward and places a hand upon her shoulder.

“You poor child,” she says, “This trial is over now.” 

All she can do is nod.

 

*

 

They spare only one other. Za Bing was of the princess’ retinue, a eunuch who has served the Bayaut many years. He is merely a servant, with no Bayaut blood, and for this they allow his life. It is a small mercy, one she would not have expected from the Khan, but she supposes the empire is mighty enough to allow small kindnesses. (Later, she learns it is Lady Chabi who counseled the Khan in this, that the matters of mercy are left to her. The Empress administers kindness after the deaths have been doled out, after the lands have been sacked and the gold taken.)

She worries he will expose her, if his loyalty to his dead masters will not allow him to see a serving girl live in the princess’ place. Za Bing was always kind to her when she served the princess, but that doesn’t mean he’ll spare her now.

He serves her as he did the princess. Without question.

“Why?” she asks, later, as he is brushing her hair.

“We all do what we must to survive,” Za Bing says, “I understand this. As do you.”

“And I,” she says, “will be forever in your debt.”

Za Bing is the last of her old life and for that, he becomes her friend. Kokachin knows there are few here who would not rip her in two to prove their own loyalty to the Khan, for their advancement, for their profit.

She trusts no one but him.

 

*

 

Kokachin knows little of Za Bing’s life before he came to the Bayaut, only that he was born into service, castrated as a boy, his cutting forever a mark of his status.

She does not pry. She knows he does not wish her to.

There are so few she can be honest with. With the Bayaut, she had friends, confidantes, among the serving girls, even with the princess herself. She has always been quiet, withdrawn, but this new life has taken her voice, forces every word she speaks to be carefully drawn and shaped.

She knows Za Bing does not hate the court as she does. His status among the Bayaut was little different than it is now. (She wonders if he felt as she does in Cambulac, if he was trapped among the people she remembers so fondly.) But he does not hold her bitterness against her.

She is grateful for that.

 

*

 

At first, she speaks as little as possible. She cannot risk slipping up, making a mistake that will doom her. They put her in the Hall of Fragrance, with the other noble girls from the nations Kublai Khan has sacked. She performs her role silently, trying her best to remember how the princess spoke, how she walked, how she acted.

She saw the siege, or some of it (remembers the shouts and screams from outside the princess’ ger, the heads on spikes as she rode away, the screams) but it is still too much to believe that they are dead now, that all of them are dead.

Her mother. Her father. Her sister and and her niece. The girls she served with. Even Tulga, who she knows she never loved, who had won her hand through persistence and flattery but not the rest of her.

One of them gone she could understand, she thinks, she could grow used to. All of them is incomprehensible.

She has not seen her father or mother since before she left to serve the princess. She remembers kissing her mother’s worn check as she left, how her mother had wept to see her go and how she had comforted her.

She’d promised to return. There is nothing to return to now.

 

*

 

Weeks later, she learns that Tulga lives.

He lives, and she thinks she may love him for that, for simply being here. She would have chosen her mother’s life before his, or her sister’s, but there is no sense bartering now, not when at least one person has been given back to her. She never loved him before, but now she thinks perhaps she can manage.

He asks for her jewels to trade among the merchants of Cambulac, to fund their escape. She gives them.

 

*

 

Her sleep is fitful. She tosses in the night, hardly sleeps more than an hour without rising. Sometimes she dreams of the siege, of the princess lying in her own blood, of the soldiers dragging her to the Khan’s feet. Other times, she dreams of Cambulac with the walls slick with blood, the Khan’s throat opened, all his soldiers and sons and ministers fallen.

A knife falls from her hand and clatters to the ground.

Sometimes she awakes screaming.

Za Bing speaks to the healer and she is given herbs. Her nights become dark and dull and quiet.

 

*

 

She has a history that is no longer her own. Her past belongs to a servant girl who stabbed herself before the soldiers could come for her and and in its place, she has taken a different one, a story that never seems quite right, no matter how often she repeats it.

Here is the story that is no longer hers:

Her mother, always round bellied and always tired, burdened by too much work and the loss of too many children. Her father, worn yet kind, seeming much older than his years. Her sister and her sister’s daughter, just learning to walk and make words.

It was a great honor to serve the princess. She had made her parents proud. She did not allow herself to weep when she left her home.

 

*

 

Tulga reaches for her in Cambulac, when they meet in one of the stables (she is here to give him a bracelet for him to sell, he must believe that she will leave with him, she knows, or he will grow hostile).

She had agreed to marry him by virtue of his persistence, his praise of her, his protestations of love. She had not loved him, but he had loved her and she was taken in by it, flattered, cajoled into taking him for a husband.

“I cannot,” she says, and he looks stricken, as though she’s wounded him.

“You would be my wife, Nergui,” he whispers, “if it were not for this place, for this Khan - “

 _But I am not your wife. I never will be._ He refuses to give up, even here, even as she has become a trophy, and he a ghost of a dead tribe, skulking outside the city. (They lay together, only once, after she agreed to become his wife, she had lain back and wondered what the fuss was about as he fumbled and prodded at her.)

“I cannot take such a risk,” she says, “if we were discovered, if I were to become with child here, in this place, it would be the end of the both of us.”

He steps back, seemingly considering her words.

“Please,” she says, “if you care for me still. Do not ask this of me.”

He nods.

 

*

 

Sometimes when Tulga’s spirits are low, he spits insults at her, calling her a fraud, a liar, a false woman. He accuses her of lusting for Kokachin’s title, her jewels, her prospects. He is sorry afterward, tells her that he barely stand this, that it is living without her that is driving him mad. It is being without her that makes him curse her and grab her and shake her.

He will be better once they have left Cambulac. He promises her this.

“This must end,” Za Bing warns, as he brushes her hair.

"I cannot say no to him outright," she says quietly.

"The boy would rather see you trampled by the Khan's horses. That is a risk I cannot allow, Kokachin. His mind is dangerous."

"But simple," she says, "he wants only me. He is not difficult to please."

"Simpler to remove the boy entirely."

Kokachin remembers when she saw him alive in Cambulac, the last living remnant of her people, of her old life.

She cannot allow it.

 

*

 

She roams the city at nights, Za Bing always close at her back. He is too fond of her to make her the prisoner that she is meant to be, so he lets her wander.

The children of the city follow her, grabbing at her skirts.  They do not look at her as some distant, untouchable thing, as the people in the court do. She brings coin for them, and bread.

Cambulac teems with illness and poverty and death.  The people are grateful for her charity, as they are for the Khan’s, for Lady Chabi’s. For all the scraps fed them by the nobility.

She would not have it so, but she does not have a choice.

 

*

 

Sometimes she doesn't know what name to call herself, caught between Nergui and Kokachin, does not know to what degree she has become lost.

She wonders if the princess curses her, if somewhere she spits at her for stealing her name. Her mistress was kind to her in life, treated her as a friend rather than a servant.

Still, there are transgressions she cannot imagine the princess would forgive.

_Forgive me. I did not wish to die._

She could never explain it to her. She would never understand. _I did not have the choice you had, princess. My death would have been an inevitability, not an act of defiance. Do you understand? Can you try?_

Her mistress was proud in a way she has been unable to emulate. True pride, pride like the princess’ or like Lady Chabi’s, is never compromised. Neither of them would leave jewels for serving boys under trees. Neither of them would see themselves so debased as she has.

She will never be royal in that sense. She knows there are few things she would not do to remain alive.

(It is her gift and her curse. She knows herself and what she is capable of in a way that few others can.)

 

*

 

She hardly pays attention when the the Venetians first come to pay the Khan tribute.

Her days in the court are long and slow, seated with the other women at the Khan’s feet. She cares for none of it, not Kublai’s moods nor the Empress’ soft, chastening words nor their son’s posturing. She hates them all, the Khan and the Empress all his soldiers and sons and ministers. The visitors who come to bow at the Khan’s feet all begin to blend together.

It is not until the guards are dragging the boy off that she pays attention. He struggles in vain, shouts for his father, begs not to be left in this court.

“You wish not the honor of service in the court of the Khan of Khans?” Kublai asks, and the boy falls silent.

Kokachin fixes her eyes to the ground.

 

*

 

Marco is too accustomed to comfort to even comprehend that he is a prisoner, below even her, a slave.

He is arrogant, a fool.

She pities him. This place is not kind to fools.

 

*

 

“Why did you follow me as you did?” she asks, much later, when he is lying in her arms, “Za Bing warned you away.”

“The way you watched me when I came to court,” he says, slowly, “I thought you might pity my state. No one else did.”

“This court is not kind,” she says, “I do not wish it on anyone.”

 

*

 

Za Bing tells her that assassins have come for the Khan, that he hovers between life and death. Sidao is suspected, of course. He is the most impulsive of the Khan’s enemies, the most likely to risk the wrath that will surely meet him in return.

South China, she knows, is a greater enemy than the Bayaut ever was. She would be glad to see the Khan dead, and all of his men but she is not foolish enough to wish for it. The Song would be no kinder to a Mongolian princess, conquered or otherwise, than the Khan’s men have been.

Cambulac, however she may hate it, is her home now. Her fate rests with the city.

 

*

 

She gives Marco the chance to run, and she cannot comprehend his failure to take it. He still has a home, even if he is forbidden from it, a city that still stands and people that still breathe.

Yet he chooses to remain.

(She asks him later, if he thinks so little of his home and he laughs quietly.

“Venezia is a beautiful city,” he says, “a great city. I should very much like to return one day.”

“Then why?” she asks.

“My father and uncle,” he says slowly, “have not taken the Silk Road west for years. I expect they will not be truly at home in Venezia until they are old men, grown too weak for travel and trade.”

“And your other people?” she asks, propping her head up with her hand.

“My mother is long since gone from this world. I was raised by my aunt. She is a good woman, but she never wished to be a mother. I expect she is relieved to have her later years to herself.” He chuckles. “I gave her much trouble as a boy.”

“I imagine,” she says, with a small smile, picturing a small Marco, bright and loud and irrepressible.

“I imagine she has still not forgiven me for breaking her finest dishes,” he says, “I was ten.”

She laughs softly at the image.

“There are no others?”

He shakes his head.)

 

*

 

The Empress takes interest in her. She expects her spectacle before the White Moon festival is to blame, her moment of honesty. She is not sure why the Empress wants to cultivate an ornery girl, but it is not for her to question.

Their afternoons together feel endless. Chabi studies her, taking in Kokachin’s answers whenever she speaks, testing her. The Empress is clever, Kokachin knows that, too clever to be taken in easily.

She fears her as she does none of the others.

 

*

 

By the time she is told she is to marry Jingim, she has guessed it already. He has three wives already, the same as his father, but there are no children from any of them (this is something the court whispers about, sometimes, but never too loudly).

She does not know what to make of him, this prince. He is cordial to her when they speak, pleasant enough, but she remembers him riding alongside his father at the siege of the Bayaut (that, above all else she cannot forget). His shouts. His fits and tantrums in the court.

Above all, he is a son of Kublai, a Khan to be.

She had hoped for escape in some small form, that in some other corner of the empire she could be free at least of this court, this Khan, the men that had slaughtered her kinsmen.

She will live and die in this palace, she realizes, and her stomach turns sick at the thought.

 

*

 

Killing Tulga is easier than she could have ever imagined. Her aim is true and her arrows swift and he falls. She gave him pity for so long, granted him reprieve after reprieve.

He did not deserve her mercy.

Her body shakes with sobs as she clutches Za Bing. She will not allow her attendants to take him from him, insists that his body stays in her rooms. She does not leave him until the morning, until finally they take him away and send her off with the other ladies of the court.

(It is her fault. She has killed him. She should have let Tulga die and instead, Za Bing has died in his place. She cannot forgive herself for that.)

 

*

 

Nobody lives now who knows her past. She should let it be so, she is safest keeping her own secrets. No one should be given the chance to betray her.

(No one should be given the chance to know her at all.)

She tells Marco, and she isn’t entirely sure of the reason, only that a life of not being seen seems too bleak and too brutal for her.

He tells her that her name, her true name, is Kokachin. She begins to believe it.

 

*

 

It is not as it was with Tulga. He is clumsy, uncertain, but he is gentle with her, tentative, almost as though he is nervous to put his hands on her. If he has lain with other women it cannot have been many times.

She guides his hands and he learns quickly.

(The same things she told Tulga remain true, the same dangers, but this time it is she who is reckless. She does not think of consequences, cannot, with the taste of blood and death in her mouth.)

He seems fragile in her arms, too easy for a sword to cut down.

 

*

 

She tells him her name, her true name, was Nergui.

"No-name?" he asks, his brow knitted in confusion.

She nods.

"My mother lost four children before me. Two stillbirths, two to fevers. Here, we believe the spirits won't find you if your name doesn't attract them. My mother did not wish me to die."

"Nergui," he says, shaping the name around his tongue, “what became of her? Your true mother?”

She is quiet, lowers her eyes.

“Oh,” he says, “I am so very sorry.”

“The Khan makes no distinctions between who takes up arms and who does not,” she says, “She was Bayaut. That was enough.”

 

*

 

She expected Marco might fall on the field of battle. She did not expect what she hears instead, that he led the Khan’s soldiers into a trap set by Sidao, that thousands of their men perished for his error.

Kokachin knows that he is incapable of treachery, that naive and blind as his allegiances may be, they are true.

That, of course, means nothing to the Khan.

 

*

 

It should be easy to plunge the knife into her belly. Everything has been taken from her now.

She hates herself for it, for this remaining bit of cowardice. The true Kokachin had seemed so certain, when she departed the world.

She wishes for that sort of will. She does not have it. Her life is stripped to nearly nothing but she does not wish to leave it behind.

 

*

 

The presentational gown Chabi gives her is purple. She knows the meaning of this. No more blue. She will be modelled in Chabi’s image.

She wishes her one day to be Empress and in this, as in everything else, Kokachin has no choice.

The attendants make her lay back as they fumble and prod at her, another invasion, another test. Chabi (unpredictable to the last) seems unconcerned at the lack of blood.

She places a hand between Kokachin’s legs and a moment later, Chabi’s eyes are cold as she passes the egg to Judar, slick with blood.

She commands the sky. The attendants merely see what she tells them to see.

It is not a reprieve, Kokachin knows, not an allowance so that she may marry the Prince. It is a warning.

 

*

 

Marco will not run with her. He is still the boy he was months ago, believing that Kublai’s favor will save the both of them, even after the Khan’s whims have almost killed him. He has a plan to win Xiangyang, and he believes his victory will save her.

(He is right, she knows, about a Mongol blade in their backs should they run. She cannot explain to him why staying seems worse. However similar their fates, she knows he will never understand.)

 

*

 

When her engagement becomes public news, the other girls of the Hall of Fragrance coo over her, expressing congratulations and carefully worded envy.

Their homelands were taken too, like hers. Their people were made slaves, their women raped, their families killed. Goryeo, Persia, Russia, Antioch, all simply parts of the great Mongolian conquest, songs to sing of Kublai Khan. She wonders if they have no shame, if they are so happy to grovel at the feet of their conquerors.

Would they be so happy to be handed off to the boy who has split their people’s blood at his father’s side?

Perhaps, she thinks, they have learned to lie as well as she has. She has never liked the other caged princesses. They have always seemed to her too content to remain in their prison, to exist in this small, gilded trap. (A part of her is afraid of them as well, that they will notice she is not one of them, that they will mark her out as a fraud.)

Still, she concedes, they have little choice. Possibly she has been unfair. They all do what they must to survive.

 

*

 

Marco’s machines serve him well. Xiangyang is taken.

Kublai does not give her to him for his efforts, but she knew he would not.

The prince is carried back to Cambulac wounded. No one speaks too loudly of the severity  of his injuries (it is so with any weakness concerning the royal family), but there are whispers that he nearly bled to death on the battlefield, that even now his life hangs in the balance.

She wonders if Jingim will die, if she should hope for it. She cannot know whether it would send her to a better fate or a worse one.

“The prince has risen,” Judar finally tells her, after days of waiting, “He is not yet recovered but it is expected that he will live.”

She simply nods.

 

*

 

Everyone stares at her through the wedding feast. Chabi is sharp and watchful, seeming to wait for her to make a mistake, however small. Jingim is polite, cordial, but there is something forced about his tone, as though he does not quite know how to speak to her.

Sorga, the woman who has had Jingim’s favor up to now, seems resigned. Kokachin knows the court's talk of her, has heard that she is preferred by Jingim but not by Chabi. The mother's will is stronger than the son's. She has chosen Kokachin for her successor.

Kokachin knows the other reason she is being given to Jingim, that he must have an heir, that she must succeed where three other women have failed.

(She shudders at the thought of what that means.)

She has not seen Marco since before Xiangyang, and he appears somber, his countenance darker than she has seen it before. She does not think she will have the chance to speak to him, with Chabi’s eyes so close, but the Khan leaves halfway through, too drunk and tired to make it through the evening and his wife follows soon after.

When nobody is watching, she takes Marco aside.

“I am sorry,” he says softly, “I wish I could have taken you from this place.”

“But you don’t regret that we did not run,” she snaps.

“No,” he says, “but I have failed you, all the same.”

Kokachin knows it is unfair to hate him for this, that she could not ask him to risk his life in running with her. All the same, she thinks, he believed in Kublai’s generosity and now she is here, a prisoner still, because of it.

"I was foolish," he says, "I imagined I could take you from this place with the Khan's permission. I was wrong."

She wonders at how it has taken this long for him to realize. Kublai would never unman his son in such a way, not after she was known to be meant for Jingim.

"And you are foolish still." 

"Kokachin - "

"And now I am trapped," she says coldly, "The Khan may one day release you from service, if you ever cease being fool enough to realize the curse it is, but me? Never." 

"I know," he says, "I know."

His tone is impossibly gentle and for a moment, she is tempted to waver, to put aside her anger with him. She has nobody but him now, with Za Bing dead.

That is not enough to force her to forgive him.

"Kokachin," he says, "I am so very sorry. I wish I could have made you free. I wish nothing in the world more."

 

*

 

It is later, in their bedchamber and when Jingim’s hand comes to rest on the side of her arm, she jumps. She has acted the part around him well enough up to now - it’s involuntary, a nervous reaction. Too many people have touched her without her wish.

He draws back, seeming puzzled, his eyes studying her.

“My apologies, prince,” she says, her words as measured, as careful as she can manage, “I meant no insult.”

It is not right to address him as ‘prince’, not now, but ‘husband’ does not suit. She is not sure what else to say.

“I have never taken a woman who did not wish me to,” he says, “I do not intend to do so now.”

She studies his face in silence, unsure how to respond. Does he mean that he would have her more enthusiastic, that she does not act the part well enough for his liking? His father and his mother are always speaking in threats, even when they feign kindness. There is always menace behind their words.

“What do you mean?” she asks.

“I require nothing from you,” he says, “nothing that you do not wish.”

Now she is the one to step back, surprised (they have thoroughly puzzled one another, she thinks).

It’s a reprieve she did not expect. Still she is cautious, wary of offending his pride.

“I am very tired tonight,” she says, slow and careful, “I would like merely to sleep.”

Jingim nods.

“Then we will sleep.”

 

*

 

He sleeps, but she cannot. Jingim tosses, mumbling to himself, saying words she cannot quite make out. He is naked to the waist, and she studies the burns on his chest, the remnants of Chinese gunpowder. The skin is mottled and red still. She has not seen many men unclothed, but he is thinner than Tulga or Marco,

He has defied her expectations this once, at least. She does not know what to expect of him beyond this. It does not matter in some senses. Cambulac remains a prison. She will live and die within these walls and there is nothing she can do about it. The man they have given her to does not matter.

Still, there is a relief in this. At least he has left her alone.

 

*

 

The knife is still in her drawer and she thinks of it sometimes, but never for too long.

She does not have it in her, she knows that now. She will live until her life is claimed or her body fails and perhaps that is foolish, perhaps it will drive her mad.

But so it is.

 

 


End file.
